Them & Us

Them and us fishes, photo Suzanne Beishon (Click to enlarge)

Have-yachts...

On a boat trip round Capri in Italy this summer, any guilt over how much we were spending on holiday disappeared - when we met a mini-fleet of superyachts flying union jacks.

It was probably more ships than the Royal Navy has now. I took down a couple of names, wondering whether I knew any of the owners, so might get invited on for a beer? Needless to say, I was disappointed.

These were charter yachts - so of course, any ordinary worker can hire them. All you need this winter for the 'Naia', for instance, is Ł443,459, plus expenses, per week. Of course, you can split the cost with up to eleven guests.

Jeremy Short

... have-nots

Meanwhile, 12.9 million people in the UK live in 'absolute poverty'.

A June report by the House of Commons Library found one in five individuals had an income under 60% of the national median last financial year. The figure also takes into account housing costs and inflation.

3.7 million of those people are children. That's 27% of all kids.

The Socialist has nothing against fancy food and cool submarines. What we object to is a system that limits the finer things to the super-rich minority while driving the rest of us into penury.

We say: take the wealth off the 1%! For public ownership of the top corporations, and democratic planning of production to meet the needs of all. Then we can end poverty for good - and maybe throw on some extra submarines for the summer hols.

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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.

The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.

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